The Friday Canon: COMIC RELIEF

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Switch on the BBC this evening and you'll be confronted by charitable types urging you to part with your cash for needy causes in return for rubbish comedy. Yep, it's Comic Relief - the source of many a novelty single over the years. I can't think of a more worthy subject for this week's canon! You have just FIVE ticks to give away...

[Poll #947847]

Stock Aitken Waterman: (link)
1. Dead Or Alive - You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)
2. Mel & Kim - Respectable
3. Bananarama - Venus
=4. Kylie Minogue - Better The Devil You Know
=4. Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up
=4. Kylie Minogue - I Should Be So Lucky
7. Mel & Kim - Showing Out (Get Fresh At The Weekend)
8. Bananarama - Love In The First Degree
=9. Donna Summer - This Time I Know It's For Real
=9. The Reynold Girls - I'd Rather Jack

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

This poll gives me the chance to ask an important question:

Why isn't Comic Relief funny?

You'd think it would be quite a good opportunity for comedians and comedy writers to put their best work in front of a wide audience. As anyone who's sat through one will attest this doesn't happen. Why not?

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

I think it is, or it was for the first few years, then I stopped watching. Wasn't The Curse of Fatal Death for Comic Relief?

putting a downer on the whole thing

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

In my opinion, it's because when I think about what a drop in the horrible, CEO-embedded sea of charitable donations (and beyond that the ocean of The World Economy) Comic Relief actually is, how much complete novelty crap goes on and how much expenditure it must involve in the first place (and I bet red noses etc. are made in sweatshops; the headbands in Claire's Accessories definitely are) the whole thing is infinitely depressing. The Radio One Truck think has raised as much as the Oxfam shop I used to work in did in a year and while that was a ridiculously high-earning shop (bookshop which meant it did phenomenolly well off first editions, etc. but mostly made cash off flogging mass quantities of Mills and Boons for 35p per go I suspect) it was only one of thousands up and down the country. Comic Relief would do better to simply raise awareness of world/domestic issues rather than what it does which is focus in on a few little cases and imply that it can all be solved with a few quid down the phone. [NB am not implying Oxfam is perfect charity above, was just illustrating fundraising gap]

Not to mention the fact small children with AIDS are never really funny, no matter how many Ant and Dec interludes you put in between. :(

Which isn't to say it's not worth giving money to comic relief or that the work it does isn't really good, because it is; I donated several times earlier today and usually buy the single except that my financial state is such that that's really not happening until next week, it's just I also find the campaign a bit horribly naive/misguided.